ianyan magazine
April 24 2010

Alternative Voices on the Armenian Genocide and Armenian-Turkish Relations

By Liana Aghajanian on April 24th, 2010

Too often, not all voices are heard. In an effort to jump start
dialogue, ianyan magazine presents three alternative voices on
important issues and significant subjects dealing with the Armenian
Genocide and Armenian-Turkish relations.

An American in Glendale

There is no doubt that Glendale has the largest concentration of
Armenians in the United States. In fact, according to the 2000 U.S.
Census, Glendale’s Armenian population had reached 53,000, up by over
22,000 from 1990.

Dana Leigh has lived in Glendale for 2 years. A college student
studying creative writing, her family is white and Ecuadorian. She has
close Armenian family friends and even dated an Armenian man. Her
experience has been as an outsider looking in.

When it comes to the Armenian Genocide, she doesn’t understand the
argument against recognition.

`It seems imperative that the genocide should be recognized and
acknowledged for what it was so that there is truly any kind of
`moving forward’,’ she said. `You can’t build foundations on slippery
statements and that seems to be all anyone is willing to put forward
when talking about this, outside of Armenians of course.’

She respects the great lengths Armenians go to for recognition,
however her own acknowledgment of the events in 1915 has been met with
uncertainty around Armenians.

`Its almost as if they think I care because it’s trendy or the way to
be where I live,’ she said. `But I believe the more people who know
and care about this, the better the chances that it will truly never
happen again. So I ignore the sometimes exclusive and suspicious looks
and stick by what I believe. And show my support and acknowledgment on
April 24.’

She also sees the benefits in Armenians reaching out to those outside
the Armenian community, saying it will go a long way towards reform
and future change.

As for Turkish government’s denial of the Armenian Genocide, she
doesn’t see the country coming around anytime soon, but sees
recognition as an absolute essential before anything can move forward.

`I think they’re terrified of how it will make them look,’ she said.
`No country wants that in their history, but many have it anyway. It
seems to me that the countries that have truly moved forward from it
are those who have acknowledged the wrong they’ve done (like Germany
with the Nazi regime).’

A Turk in Montreal

Placards held at Hrant Dink’s Funeral/Wikimedia Commons
A software engineering student who grew up in Turkey and came to
Canada to complete her University education, Kubra Ozguven never
really had a chance to have much direct contact with Armenians in
Turkey, but that changed when she came to Montreal, which has a
sizable and active Armenian community.

The first thing she realized were the many cultural similarities she
shared with Armenians, which ranged from food to music.

`It was a worthwhile experience to see that we could actually talk
about and discuss things that are generally considered a taboo in
Turkey and Armenia in a free setting,’ she said. `It was a nice
experience.’

Her interactions with the Armenian community happened by chance – in
her first year at school, she happened to have an Armenian professor,
and then her lab partner for a class turned about to be Armenian. She
also met Armenians in Armenian and Greek restaurants around the city.

They were as surprised to form connections as she was.

`They’re not really used to seeing someone, who does not really think
in the mainstream way, they usually have these regular monolithic
ideas,’ she said. `The Armenian Diaspora, they don’t have much direct
experience with Turks from Turkey.’

Although she said some people she spoke to didn’t want to touch up on
the subject of the Armenian Genocide, she likes to and prefers to
discuss it, sometimes even initiating the conversation.

Having first heard about it when she was in high school when France
officially recognized the Genocide in 2001, she began to open talk
about it and see it as an issue after Hrant Dink was murdered in 2007.

`It really had a huge impact on me,’ she said. `I felt like `Oh my
god, I’m a young Turkish person, I wasn’t there in 1915 but what
happened to Hrant Dink, we all knew it, he was well known and I knew
him and I read him. There was this issue of responsibility that came
to me. The hatred that caused that was not something that appeared
over night, it had roots back in history.’

When Dink was killed thousands marched in Istanbul in protest. They
chanted, `We are all Armenian, we are all Hrant Dink.’

`The death of Hrant Dink, it was a wake up call for most people in
Turkey, especially for intellectuals,’ she said. `We had been ignoring
this topic for this long, now our 17-year-olds are getting up and
killing people – that is a problem, a huge problem and we have to do
something about it.’

In Turkey, talking about the Armenian Genocide is a taboo. Ozguven
says this is partly because it is not well known and partly because of
the preconception about the word `genocide.’

`When they hear that word, they think Hitler, gas chambers and huge
ovens, and that kind of imagery is terrible for them,’ she said. `I
think it’s generally part ignorance, nervousness and anxiety around
the word genocide.’

When emotions are mixed into issues, especially history, the entire
discussion becomes highly charged and less realistic, she said. She
believes that things like the Armenian Genocide are not straight black
and white issues.

`People seem to treat it in a very binary manner,’ she said. `It was a
lack of empathy that I was annoyed by.’

In order to establish dialogue between Turks and Armenians, she
believes doing it through non-governmental organizations is the way to
go, because it would involve actual, ordinary people, starting from
students and youth.

`They have less preconceptions about it, less prejudice, youth is much
more globalized and has a better understanding of the human
experience,’ she said, adding that Turks and Armenians can find common
ground if people are just brought together.’

Although she plans to stay for a few years in Canada, she really wants
to return to Turkey.

`It is a developing country and it has a lot of problems, in terms of
politics, like relations with Armenia,’ she said. `As an intellectual,
I want to be part of that development, I want to go there and do
something.’

She also plans to be more active in Turkish and Armenian relations and
also said she wants to go to Armenia, something she feels like would
be a nice experience for her.

For Ozguven, the most important thing is prevent another Genocide from
taking place.

`Armenians are obsessed with the word too much, and Turks obsess over
it too little. I wasn’t there in 1915, I don’t know what kind of
terrible things happened or how they can be named, I don’t know,’ she
said. `What I care is that some humanitarian tragedy happened and we
should take a lesson from it. The idea that it can happen again, I
feel terrible about that. I think we should focus on the future and
take lessons from the Armenian Genocide in a way that we ensure that
no such tragedy ever happens again.’

A Jewish American in Turkey

Now living in Turkey, Adam Isenberg had `rather mixed’ interactions
with some Armenian kids.

`There’s a lot of anger and hate that gets instilled from a young age
in the Diaspora,’ he said. `This causes conflict with other groups
that are similarly indoctrinated, particularly over the issue of
equating tragedies and subsequent argument over who suffered more.’

In Turkey, his experience is beginning to change.

Recently, he met a Diasporan Armenian whose father was Jewish and
mother was Armenian who shocked him by uttering the sentence, `I don’t
hate Turks,’ he says. ‘ This should explain the image I had in my mind
of (at least Diaspora) Armenians up to that point.’

He says he doesn’t have any real faith in the governments of either
Turkey or Armenia to really make peace.

`I’m in Turkey and I know how things get done here,’ he said. None of
Turkey’s major parties has any real incentive to make peace with the
Armenian state. However ignorant I may be of the Armenian side’s
government, it is widely acknowledged that [Armenia] is quite
dependent on the Diaspora and Russia, and thus doesn’t really `need’
to make peace with Turkey.’

Echoing Ozguven’s sentiments, Isenberg believes in forging human
connections between the two people.

`My view is that in almost every conflict and every state, leaders
really come last,’ he said. `Somehow we need to (re)build a real,
organic connection between Turks and Armenians.’

Because of the general financial stability of the Armenian and Turkish
Diasporas, visits to the homeland of the so-called `enemy’ would
enable both to learn something and teaching something from the other
side, he said.

He also believes in the importance of bi-national institutions related
to culture, education and more.

`For example, how many Armenian students holding any citizenship but
Turkish are in Turkish universities? How many Turks are attending
Armenian universities anywhere?,’ he said, noting that high-level
government meetings strike him as being a parade of men in suits
shaking hands in front of flags and getting nothing done.

Isenberg is very fond of living in Turkey, calling Istanbul a
fascinating city and says that both Armenians and Turks share a lot of
cultural similarities.

In terms of socio-political relevant similarities, he says that both
Armenians and Turks are obsessed with `victimhood’ and `masterhood.’

`The former cannot give up on the idea of restoring past Armenian
Kingdoms, no matter the cost, and uses its obsession with the Armenian
Genocide to justify this,’he said. `The latter still lives for the
Kemalist dream of an indivisible Turkish state, and when this is
questioned, justifies it with a sense of victimhood not unlike
Israel’s: We are surrounded by enemies, we must stand strong, everyone
wants to tear apart poor, innocent Turkey. Like with Israel, my
objection is not in the desire for `unity’, but in the insistence that
a state be fundamentally Turkish/Jewish.’

As for Armenians in Turkey, his experiences have led him to have an
impression that Turkish Armenians are generally proud of their
`Armenianness,’ but able to divorce it from what he calls the
pointless political posturing of competing nationalisms.

Isengerg recalls an experience he had in Istanbul with a Turkish
Armenian optician named Vartan, who answered all his questions and
then asked about Armenians in America.

`His employee there was a younger Turkish woman who must’ve thought
the whole encounter quite strange, because I suppose to her he’s just
`my boss’, not `my Armenian boss,’ he said, adding that Turkish
Armenians are a valuable link, which Turks and Armenians must build
upon if they ever hope to see progress.

As for the present, he says Turks view their current relationship with
Armenia as being more related to the events of the Nagorno-Karabakh
war than the events in 1915.

The war, which lasted from 1988 to 1994, left an estimated 30,000
dead, according to the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly

`For the Turks, I am bothered by their quickness to label any ethnic
cleansing not `perpetrated’ by `Turks’ as `genocide’ while being
unwilling to deal with `genocides’ for which `they’ are
`responsible,” Isenberg said. For the Armenians, I am bothered by
their ability to still be so adament about deaths that occurred almost
100 years ago while seemingly showing no compassion for dead and
displaced Azeri civilians from the 90s.’

He also has a view on the bigger picture.

`For people in general, I am bothered by our consistent need to find
`victims’ and `culprits’, point our fingers in judgment, demand this
and that by way of reparations,’ he said. `What we should be doing is
trying to make real peace and build a more progressive future
together.’

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress